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Drought brings special challenges to dry and desert climate dwellers. Droughts impact the available water, making it scarce to completely unavailable for potentially long periods. Water is necessary for drinking, growing the vegetables, raising livestock, bathing, cooking, cleaning, laundry and sewage transport and treatment. To ensure continued water availability during dry times and get the most of your available water, here are four ways to do your part in a drought.
Water-Saving Behaviors
The simplest, and cheapest, way to save water is changing your habits surrounding regular water-using activities. Washing cars with a self-closing nozzle, cleaning driveways with a broom, turning the water off while brushing teeth or soaping up in the shower, watering plants in cooler times of the day, and composting over using the garbage disposal all greatly reduce water usage.
Water-Saving Technology
Although it is simple to change behaviors, it is not always easy. This is where technology comes to the rescue. Using a smart controller in yard and garden irrigation can save water and money. Smart controllers run your irrigation timers while syncing with weather monitoring systems to turn off your system or delay watering on rainy days. Installing low-flow faucets (including aerators), toilets, shower heads and drip irrigation systems all can work together with a smart controller to ensure you are using the least amount of water for your regular activities.
Implement Drought-Tolerant Landscaping
In addition to delivering the water more efficiently with technology, using nature can help us save water too. Removing grass, plants requiring large amounts of water and non-natives from your lawn and garden, while replacing them with native and drought-tolerant species can dramatically decrease your water demand.
Re-Using Water, aka Greywater
Installing high-tech greywater systems, or even saving the cold water from a slow-heating shower in a bucket for the garden effectively recycles the water you use to be used again. Re-using bath, laundry and dish-water for the lawn and garden can greatly reduce your water demand while increasing the utility of the water you already regularly use.
The demand we place on the water system in dry climates and deserts during droughts determines how much is left for the environment, other people and the community of individuals around us who all depend on that water into the future. To ensure you, your neighbors and the environment have the water needed reduce your demand while using water more wisely and efficiently through the many methods available to us all.

As drought-stricken California struggles to meet the mandatory water use restrictions Gov. Jerry Brown announced earlier this month, the governor is urging a sharp increase in fines for the worst violators, and moving to help local water agencies conduct environmental reviews more quickly. On Apr. 28, Brown called for legislation to sharply increase fines up to a maximum $10,000 for the worst violations of the conservation orders. The current maximum fine is $500 per day. Also under Brown's proposal, wholesale and retail water agencies, as well as city and county governments, will be able to issue penalties. They could enforce both local water restrictions and restrictions ordered by the State Water Resources Control Board. Monetary penalties would go toward local conservation efforts. In a separate action, Brown directed state agencies to help local water agencies cut the amount of time needed to comply with state-required environmental reviews. The proposed new penalties come amid continuing debate about Brown's unprecedented April 1 executive order mandating that over 3,000 urban water districts in the state cut their water use by an overall 25 percent this year compared with 2013. The order also directs the state to provide financial help to homeowners shifting to drought-resistant landscaping, and rebates for new water-efficient appliances. The order focuses mainly on urban water uses like lawns, parks, public medians and golf courses, which take up less than a quarter of water use by people in the state. "I would hope that we don't see this in some punitive way, but that we see the challenge ... the climate is getting warmer, the weather is getting more extreme and unpredictable, and we have to become more resilient, more efficient and more innovative," the governor said then. A major bone of contention is the omission from the April 1 order of any mandatory or voluntary conservation targets for agriculture, which uses nearly 80 percent of water not designated for environmental conservation. Instead, irrigation districts were told to develop drought management plans and monitor groundwater levels, and the State Water Resources Control Board was told to go after illegal and wasteful water users. In exempting agriculture from cutbacks, Brown has sided with farmers who say they have already suffered four years of drought as well as sharp cutbacks by state and federal water providers, resulting in more land left fallow and lower income for the agriculture industry. Thousands of farm workers have also been put out of work. Many water and conservation experts say agriculture should be included in the cutbacks. An often-cited issue is increasing pumping of groundwater, which in some Central Valley areas has already caused the land to sink measurably. Until 2014, California was the only western state not regulating groundwater withdrawals, and the new regulations don't become fully effective until 2022. Another issue is planting of highly profitable but water-guzzling crops like almonds. Many farmers also continue to use flood irrigation rather than the much more efficient drip irrigation. Some environmentalists also call for limiting water use on land used to raise crops for animal feed. The debate takes place against the background of an antiquated allocation system that gives priority, and lower rates, to holders of "senior" water rights - those claimed before California established a permit process in 1914 - with holders of "junior" rights claimed after that time receiving less. Though California is the country's largest agricultural producer and employs over 400,000 people, the industry accounts for just 2 percent of the state's gross domestic product. Meanwhile, cities facing the sharpest cutbacks are pleading for exemptions because they have invested in recycled or desalinated water, or face great demands for water during extreme summer temperatures, or rely on local sources rather than state resources. Also sharply debated is the governor's failure to include the oil and gas industry in his mandatory restrictions. Environmentalists estimate that more than two million gallons of fresh water are used daily to stimulate oil wells through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and related processes. The oil industry contends that such drilling produces more water than oil, and much of that water is provided to farmers. But environmentalists also point out that earlier this year, California's Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources required oil companies to shut down 12 wastewater wells in the Central Valley because they are located close enough to underground wells for drinking or agricultural water to threaten contamination. Another 176 wells are undergoing investigation, and over 2,500 more wells are in areas that were never approved for wastewater injection. Zack Malitz of the social action organization CREDO told Reuters earlier this year, "Gov. Brown is forcing ordinary Californians to shoulder the burden of the drought by cutting their personal water use while giving the oil industry a continuing license to break the law and poison our water. Fracking and toxic injection wells may not be the largest users of water in California, but they are undoubtedly some of the stupidest."

During what is now California's worst drought in at least 1,200 years, agencies are ambivalent over how to convince Angelenos to cut water usage. Potential options include everything from educating residents to rationing, fines, and threats. While a recent executive order was issued by Gov. Jerry Brown requiring a 25 percent cut in water use from 2013 levels, communites are left to struggle with how exactly to achieve that goal. Part of the solution may be getting the wealthy to cooperate with working class people. Retired resident Dorothy, 65, has lived in LA's Palms neighborhood for 11 years. She told the People's World, "For people who have a decent salary, life is quite comfortable. But we do have a big problem with the water. Unless we cut consumption by a quarter or even a third, we could end up with a real disaster. And so far, many people are not doing their part to save water, despite what they say. They're just going about business as usual. And bottled water and those types of solutions are sometimes out of reach for the poor." The woman, who emigrated from Germany, said she never ceases to be amazed by how people come along to make a quick buck off of every crisis. She referred to the recent trend of lawn-painting companies - organizations that dye the dried lawns of the upper class a healthy shade of green to keep up appearances. One such company is LawnLift, started by 45 year-old mortgage broker Jim Power, who said, "Most homeowners have no clue how to water their lawns" anyway. According to the LA Times, Escondido resident Sean McDaniel, holding his two pet poodles and gesturing at his emerald lawn, said, "I painted the lawn two days ago." One can buy a 32 oz. bottle of this lawn paint from LawnLift's website for the not-so-low price of $45.95. "It's all well and good that the wealthy are having their lawns painted green," Dorothy remarked, "but that's not a solution." Newsha Ajami, director of Urban Water Policy at Stanford University's Water in the West program, said communities need to employ a wide range of conservation measures, rather than just expecting residents to act on their own. She said that levying fines for wasting water is likely a fast way to change behavior. "You need to quickly get to the point," she said. Jonathan Parfrey, a former LA Department of Water and Power commissioner and executive director of Climate Resolve, added, "We need to soak the rich for soaking their lawns. You gotta price water accordingly so it gets their attention." One extreme, said Beverly Hills resident Daniel Fink, could be curbing lawn-watering entirely for a while. "California is in the fourth year of the worst drought, and has about a year's worth of stored water left," he said. "But one wouldn't know it looking at all the still-green lawns. We have to stop watering our lawns. The water just isn't there anymore. I know that would be unpopular, but is it better to wait until the taps run dry?" This drought, Dorothy lamented, "is one example of how we're all going to suffer from climate change."

A study, published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has linked a severe drought that helped fuel the Syrian conflict to climate change. The drought was one of the worst in the country’s modern history and lasted from 2007 to 2010. The Syrian conflict has been ongoing since early 2011 when the regime violently attacked peaceful anti-government protesters. With no end in sight, the Syrian war has left more than 200,000 people dead and about 11 million people have been displaced from their homes. The UN refugee agency UNHCR says Syria is now "the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era". “Nobody really expected that we would reach this stage in which we will actually be having this national disaster in Syria,” Marwan Kabalan, a Syrian academic and analyst at Doha Institute, told Al Jazeera as the conflict entered its fifth year this past Sunday. “The heavy-handed approach that was used by the regime against the peaceful protesters was the main reason that this fairly peaceful revolution has turned into the sort of conflict that we are witnessing right now.” The 3-year long drought caused widespread crop failure and a mass migration of people to urban Syrian centres. This alongside of other factors – such as corruption, inequality, poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies – “had a catalytic effect” and contributed to increased political unrest and, ultimately, civil war. Although the region normally experiences periodic dry spells, the study, which is based on meteorological data, determined that the extreme nature of the Syrian drought couldn’t be due to natural changes alone. The study’s authors linked the drought to century-long trends towards hotter and drier conditions in the region – which mirrored computer models of human influences on the climate system, i.e. increases in greenhouse-gas emissions causing climate change. Colin Kelley, a climatologist at the University of California and the study's lead author, told The New York Times that "a drought this severe was two to three times more likely" because of the increased pressure climate change has on the region’s aridity. Francesco Femia, founder and director of the Center for Climate and Security, said that the newly released study "builds on previous work" on the relation between conflicts and climate change. “While there is a very complex array of social, economic and political factors that drive conflict, the study reinforces the fact that climate change and natural resource mismanagement are problems that can exacerbate instability in a country, and potentially make conflict more likely.” “Given continued instability and a forecast of increased drying in the region, this issue should be better integrated into the international security agenda,” Femia said. The war in Syria has caused an unimaginable humanitarian crisis, and this new study adds more weight to the debate surrounding climate change and armed conflicts. Global warming is clearly already sparking unrest around the world.

While here in Northern Italy there are 18º and a lot of rain, storms and a Autumn climate California is a little bit hotter. Here's a news for the people who believe climate change doesn't exist: California’s three-year drought just went from bad to dreadful. In the course of the last week, the crimson expanse of “exceptional drought” grew to engulf the northern part of the state.
The following chart , showing the drought's progession since 2011, speaks for itself:
All of California is in "severe drought" (shown in orange), and 82 percent is rated “extreme drought” (in red). The agency’s highest drought rating — “exceptional drought” (crimson) -- now covers 58 percent of the state, up from 36 percent a week ago. California is becoming Sahara. Cheer up, beautiful people, it’s not the worst drought California has ever seen: in 1977, the state’s water storage was at 41 percent of the historical average but conditions are still getting worse.
California is famous for its agriculture sector, especially wine grapes which are located most in the Cental Valley, the heart of agriculture, that now is in a terrible crisis. To face this drought Governor Jerry Brown has called for a statewide voluntary reduction of water use by 20 percent, and residents now face fines of as much as $500 a day for wasting water. They should have think to that earlier but it's the nature of humans, thinking that prevention is useless and not effective.
Let's here what NASA said about the drought (spoiler alert: they made a joke): “California is supposed to be the Golden State. Make that golden brown” sad but true “According to the US Dept. of Agriculture and NOAA, dry conditions have become extreme across more than 62% of California’s land area—and there is little relief in sight”. California produces 20% of U.S. GDP and this drought is effecting the economy of the state and the people, because of the situation thousands of farmers are losing their jobs.
On January 18th 2014 Govern Jerry Brown declared the state of emergency and it was a winter month. Now it's Summer and with a further increase of temperatures the situation's getting worse. Any solutions? Not really, this problem is effecting California for decades but this time is the worst because of climate change. The best solution should have been prevention, too late for that. Preventing any waste of water, low the levels of CO2. Everybody keep saying that, let's hope this time things will change.
References from Bloomberg.com and Nasa.gov
Photo from BusinessInsider.com

The U.S. National Drought Monitor reports that half of the United States is now experiencing drought - with nearly 15 percent of the nation gripped by extreme drought (see the >map below). The scale and severity of the drought is especially worrying. Another concern is the persistence of this drought, with droughts staying in force for longer and longer periods.
The entire state of California is currently affected by extreme drought. This has a serious impact on the fruit and vegetable agriculture sector in California as well as for grains and livestock in the Plains and South Central West. It's expected that at least 54 percent of the U.S. wheat crop, 30 percent of corn, and 48 percent of cattle is affected by some level of drought.
And in the east of the U.S. it's almost the opposite. A recently released report confirms that climate change is already impacting the United States. The number of extreme weather events, including very heavy rain events, has increased in the eastern parts of the nation. The number of extreme rain events has already increased over 70 percent in the Northeast.
Are you experiencing any of this extreme weather?

California is undergoing its most severe drought in decades, due in part to decreased rainfall and reduced winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range as seen in these images. In 2013, California received less precipitation than in any other year since it became a state in 1850. Water conservation efforts are already in place for many locations and the potential for wildfire and major agricultural impact is high. Source: NASA

As of May 6, 2014, half of the United States was experiencing some level of drought. Nearly 15 percent of the nation was gripped by extreme to exceptional drought. For the Plains and the Southwest, it’s a pattern that has been persistent for much of the past several years, U.S. Drought Monitor writes.

Since last year, California has been plagued by drought, with Los Angeles in particular having its driest year on record in 2013. Angelenos only saw reprieve in early March, when heavy rainfall finally arrived there. Now, scientists are warning that an even more dire situation is on the way for the Golden State: a megadrought that could last for decades, affecting everything from wildlife to agriculture.
And although the storm system that brought precipitation to LA is going to help combat the drought in the short-term, weather officials don't believe it will have a lasting effect. The drought, of course, is a product of climate change, and it stands to reason that the two will worsen simultaneously.
Lisa Sloan, professor of Earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and author of a report on the issue, explained that the California drought is largely owed to the global warming-induced melting of Arctic ice. Jacob Sewall, a graduate student who co-published the report, remarked, "Where the sea ice is reduced, heat transfer from the ocean warms the atmosphere, resulting in a rising column of relatively warm air." Sloan added, "And this will only get worse, with Arctic sea ice diminishing quickly. In fact, I think the actual situation in the next few decades could be even more dire than our study suggested."
Climate change blogger and founding editor of Climate Progress Joseph Romm said that droughts in the western U.S. on the whole will increase in intensity and frequency as weather patterns change. He explained, "Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the sun's energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature."
Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist from the University of California Berkeley, said that megadroughts - those lasting for more than 100 years - have occurred in the past and could return. "If we go back several thousand years," she said, "we've seen that droughts can last over a decade - and in some cases, over a century. We can expect that this will happen again. California should be prepared for an eventual dry period" of that magnitude.
Should this happen, it would create an increasingly desperate set of circumstances for Californians, who live in one of the largest agricultural regions in the world. The effects such a drought would have on crops would be disastrous. As a result, the cost of fruits and vegetables alone would soar, thus making it an economic issue as well.
Celeste Cantu, general manager for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, said California should start preparing for this now. "There will be cataclysmic impacts. We would need to import water" to some 4.5 million southern Californians, especially ranchers and farmers.
According to paleoclimatologist Edward Cook, "the current drought" in the southwestern U.S. overall "could be classified as a megadrought - 13 years running." He pointed out that two prior megadroughts have occurred in the Sierra Nevada of California, each last between 100 and 200 years. If the worst-case scenario comes to fruition, the state's current dry period could last just as long. "There's no indication it'll be getting any better in the near term," he concluded.
This article was first published in People's World by Blake Deppe.

One of the major accusations against the environmentalists is to be too much repetitive about a thesis so to become extremely boring. Therefore, let the photo speaks. From the image we can clearly see a desert landscape, like a Far West scenario. It’s California. This image depicts a devastating calamity, California’s drought. It’s a tragic consequence of the weather, “we can’t control it” said the Govern of California Jerry Brown.
All we can do is face its consequences.
38 millions of people live in California and they need water and also agriculture do need it. The Metropolitan Water District, the Los Angeles-based utility for 19 million people in Southern California, asked customers to voluntarily reduce water use by 20 percent.
California isn’t the only state in this situation, eleven states are involved but we know that empathy doesn’t create water.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, about two-thirds of California was hit by “severe” or “exceptional” drought. Some restrictions concerning the use of water have been implemented but of course there have been many violations.
Water shortage wasn’t and isn’t the only problem: food prices may rise at least 10% and lost revenue in 2014 from farming sector could reach $5 billion and the number of wildfires last years had increased of 50% from 2012.
The last year was the driest on record.
Don’t worry. Soon all of this will be over. At least so they say… there’s a complicate plan of $15 billion of tunnels that should ship water from Sierra Nevada to the entire California. Obviously there are environmental controversies but this should be the strategy. Unfortunately this won’t be the last drought in California.
The Golden State needs long-term measures to prevent these droughts. The first and most important measure should be conservation. There are dozens of ways to save gallons of water. Spending $15 billion is a little useless when saving could be the perfect, economic and long-term solution.
References: Time, Bloomberg.
Photo from Bloomberg.

Only a day after legislators and hundreds of farmers from parched districts in Northern California and the Central Valley rallied on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento, Jerry Brown, Governor of California, made an emergency declaration. "We are in an unprecedented, very serious situation," Brown said while calling on Californians to cut their water consumption by 20%. The now three-year long drought has forced cities to cut water use and may leave farmers no choice but to stop planting some crops.
Read the article: Governor declares drought emergency in California